Terrible Virtues
by Elven Ink
Summary: **HIATUS** The Great War may have been averted, but it didn't go unnoticed by the world. The Last War was simply waiting its turn — and humanity needed seven more soldiers to fight the forces of Heaven and Hell. Crowley/Aziraphale
1. Chapter 1

**AN: This fanfiction is based primarily on the TV Show _Good Omens, _rather than the book. If your humble author was any sort of quality writer, they would have finished the book version of _Good Omens_ before beginning this. As it is, your humble author is still in the process of reading it. **

**This work will take a leaf from the book version, however, in that it will be written in third person omniscient, rather than the author's usual default of third person limited. This serves two purposes: one, that it flows more seamlessly with the original book's style, and two, that the author can assure themselves that this is a perfectly valid form of writing practice for their own novel, and not one long exercise in procrastination*. **

**Feedback will be duly devoured and felt wondrous over. Please do leave some. **

**(*Which it is.)**

* * *

The weeks following a near-miss of the end of the world were particularly odd. They were odd in the same way the days after moving house were odd — a condensed flurry of utter chaos envelopes your life. You can't quite imagine getting out of the other side the same, and yet all of a sudden, normality returns. Only, it doesn't return gracefully or gently. It returns loudly, slamming down on your new sofa and reminding you that even though you're _here _now and not _there_, your life has followed along and nothing has really gotten better or worse. The grass isn't greener after all, and your life hasn't changed. It's just happening somewhere else than before. Only now, you have to eat takeaway for the next week until the oven is installed.

This crushing sense of normality had begun to take its toll on the demon currently driving through London, dodging pedestrians rather than slowing down for them. While it was pleasant to be able to get through a whole _The Velvet Underground _album without the potent boom of Satan's soul-crushing tones interrupting at any given moment, it was horrendously quiet. He didn't _have _to shirk his duties anymore. He didn't have duties to shirk anymore. Doing a little tempting or not doing a little tempting now resulted in the same risk: none at all. He didn't have to write little lies to head office anymore. Crowley was bored, and boredom was quite a lot more painful than fretting over the end of the world.

Still, today he had _plans_. Normal-people plans at that, which for a demon, was quite abnormal. Crowley was off to do something quite mundane, but wholly necessary, with his closest companion on this tiny rock of a world.

Crowley screeched his Bentley to a halt outside of the old Soho bookshop. He paused to check his reflection in the rear-view mirror and adjusted his sunglasses to the _perfect_ degree, and slithered from his seat out into the bustling London street. A swagger perfected over many eons brought the demon to the front door, in total and unobscured view of the 'Sorry, Closed' sign. Crowley knew this was part of Aziraphale's ploy to keep his book sales cripplingly low — for the angel was not so much a bookseller as a book hoarder. The shop was merely a large storage unit for the angel's impressive collection, though when Crowley had suggested an actual storage unit, the angel had looked positively affronted at the idea of leaving his precious tomes 'shivering in the cold'.

The demon promptly ignored the closed sign, however, and with a careful flick of his wrist, the lock unfortunately broke. Letting himself in, another twirl of his hand miraculously locked the door behind him.

"Aziraphale?" Crowley called, swanning through the shop. He hadn't expected a response. For you see, although the sun may rise in the east, the angel of the eastern gate certainly didn't feel any great instinctive need to rise along with it. No, Aziraphale was no more a morning person than Crowley was a...person-person. Crowley was in no position to judge the other, not in the least because he was a demon and systematically wasn't _qualified_ to judge anyone. Crowley himself had once slept nearly an entire century away, such was his enjoyment of slumber. But Aziraphale made Crowley look like a true morning lark by comparison.

"Wakey-wakey, angel, come on!" Crowley called as he walked through the back room, hands hardly in his pockets so much as his fingers were trapped halfway into the tiny slips at the front of his skinny jeans that claimed to be pockets. He made his way through the shop to Aziraphale's room, opening the door gently and then remembering he was actually trying to wake the angel. He then proceeded to nearly wrench the door from its hinges in order to make as much noise as possible.

Not a soul stirred in the bedroom, not that Crowley would have been able to see anything stirring there. Aziraphale's bed was, in a word, ridiculous. Giant plumes of fluffy white bedding billowed over half of the room, melted indiscernibly with white fur throws and silk bed-runners. It was the sort of bed where you ran the risk of being devoured by it if you so much as sat on the edge of it. Finding Aziraphale within its fluffy cloud-meets-marshmallow horrors was marginally more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. Crowley had once taken part in such a lark one particularly boring year in the 14th century in order to while away some of the painful time. He had since experienced instances where finding a sleeping Aziraphale within the all-consuming airy quilt he called his bed had taken him longer by comparison.

Nervously, as though approaching a bear-trap with his last available limb, Crowley reached out one hand and tapped at the cloud of bedding. It immediately sank under his touch and he nearly fell into the plush nimbus of slumber. Catching himself, Crowley snatched his sunglasses off to try and get a better grasp of the situation.

"Oi! Angel!" He barked, finally finding something that looked like it might belong to the angel and not the half-sentient cloud he slept on — a bundle of white feathers poked out from somewhere within the thirty quilts and blankets. Crowley risked it. He shoved his hand out and grabbed what mercifully turned out to be one of Aziraphale's wings. The act brought a mewling complaint from somewhere to Crowley's left.

He shoved his left hand down and found a face. And another yelping complaint, muffled by Crowley's own hand.

With a sudden flailing of limbs and wings, Aziraphale emerged from the cloud-bed with the expression of someone who had been told all delights of the world had been cancelled forthwith with immediate effect. Sparkling blue eyes both pleaded and scowled up at Crowley. However, Crowley had become immune to that look sometime in 1632, and merely glowered down at the other.

"_This _is why we're buying you a mobile phone," Crowley pointed out. Aziraphale was already nestling himself back into the ivory oblivion of his bed, turning to smoosh his face into one of many cushions he had gathered within.

"M'okay...yes, a wonderful thought...we should arrange a time to..." The angel hummed sleepily, rolling over to drift off again. Crawley's jaw twitched; they _had _arranged a time. The time was now. In truth, the time was _years _ago, but Aziraphale had been frustratingly adverse to purchasing a mobile phone of his own. But Crowley had reached the end of his patience when it came to locating the only other supernatural entity on the planet. Satan forbid if the angel wasn't at his bookshop and had wandered off, led by nothing but his sweet-tooth and love for tiny, obscure, hidden-away coffee shops. Crowley had lost contact with Aziraphale for weeks in such instances.

Leaning back down to dig the angel out of his cotton nest, Crowley noticed something quite unusual. The two of them didn't have much by the way of secrets anymore. Six thousand-odd years of hanging around with another person did rather remove such boundaries. So it was with some surprise that Crowley discovered that morning that Aziraphale might indeed have one or two things hidden from him yet.

"Angel...what's that on your back?" Crowley asked. The angel slept without a pyjama shirt, presumably as a precaution against boiling alive inside the dense collection of cotton, silk, fur, and stuffing that made up his bed.

"...My wings, one would hope," came the muffled, unhelpful reply.

"Not _them_, the bits under them. They look like—" They looked like stumps at his waist, a few inches below were each of Aziraphale's wings sprouted.

Another jolting flurry of limbs and feathers brought Aziraphale abruptly awake, and several millimetres from inadvertently headbutting a demon back down to the fire and brimstone from whence he came.

"Ah! Nothing! Nothing, nothing," Aziraphale yelped, very much with the tone of urgency that often surrounded _something_ as opposed to _nothing_. His eyes darted from Crowley to the walls, searching for a decent enough _teensy _white lie that wouldn't remove his status as an angel. "It's erm...a birthmark, of course!"

Crowley blinked. A single, swift closing and opening of his eyelids and Aziraphale was already looking up at him, guilty as all the sins of the world.

"A birthmark?"

"Y-Yes."

"That's what you're going with?"

"...May I?"

The demon rolled his eyes.

"Get up, angel, and I won't point out that you weren't _born_ or _marked_. We've got shopping to do."

* * *

Technology wasn't so much as an Achilles' heel for Aziraphale, but more akin to politics. That was, he had neglected to keep up with it entirely for a short time, so when he was presented with it in any capacity now, his initial response was panic.

He looked over his shoulder at Crowley, who was lounging in a seat and scrolling through his own phone. Crowley glanced up at him. An eyebrow appeared from behind his sunglasses.

"Just pick the one you like," Crowley repeated, the mantra having been offered to Aziraphale a few times in the last hour. "I'll show you how to use it, whichever you pick. Promise."

Aziraphale chewed on his lower lip and went back to looking over the wall of expensive glass screens and lights. He didn't really see the need for a mobile phone, but if it made Crowley's life a little easier, then Aziraphale reasoned it would surely be unfair of him to object too much.

He turned back to Crowley.

"Will they all play that delightful game like yours does?" He pointed a manicured finger at Crowley's phone. "The one with the cats?"

Crowley's chest rose…then deflated with a sigh that was nearly as hefty as his phone bill had been the month Aziraphale discovered the wonders of _Neko Atsume_.

"Yes, Aziraphale. The cat game will be on it," he assured the other, as the angel turned back to the wall of mobiles with a much more positive expression and a mumbled 'Oooh, _marvellous!_'

As Aziraphale continued to do the unthinkable and actually read the specifications of each phone on offer, Crowley returned to his own mindless scrolling. Sixteen cat videos, three 'Fails of the Week' videos, and a spice challenge later (Crowley did enjoy the latter, and had been attempting to convince Aziraphale to eat a teaspoon of cinnamon since late 2012. To this day, Crowley's YouTube channel remains an untapped gem of opportunity), the demon's thumb paused over the screen.

A rising, verging-viral video begged for him to click it with a haphazard array of capital letters, a title that tempted you to hit it with your thumb if only for the satisfaction of smacking it with some sort of physical pressure: '100% LeGIt REaL DEmON SIgHtINg CaUGhT On TApE'.

Normally, Crowley would have saved it for bemused watching later. Normally, the video wouldn't have a slightly blurry image of his face as the thumbnail.

Leaning forward in his seat, Crowley peered at the screen a little closer, as though the pixels would sharpen for his glower. If they had any sense of self-preservation, perhaps they would have.

"Oh _shit_..." the demon snarled under his breath. "Shit-fuck-shit-shit—_Aziraphale!_"

The demon was on his feet and at a startled angel's side in a heartbeat, a hand clamping on Aziraphale's upper arm. The blond jumped a little, and looked up at Crowley with more than a hint of indignation.

"I've narrowed it down to a shortlist of four, just be patient with me a few more minutes—"

"_Look!_"

Crowley shoved his mobile phone under Aziraphale's nose. The other looked down at it, taking it from Crowley's hands carefully as though the glass would shatter in his light grip.

"Is that..._you?_"

"Yes."

"...And the number beneath, that's the amount of people who have watched your video?"

"It's not _my _video, but yes."

"Oh..._oh_. Oh, is that...the airfield?"

"Yes," Crowley took the phone back, stuffed it in his pocket, then led Aziraphale out of the store with a hand at his lower back. "Bloody CCTV at the military base, honestly, does there really _need _to be cameras _everywhere?_"

It was bad news. Bad news for them both. Humans were, by their very nature, rather blind to reality. But when they _did _look up and notice, they had an awful tendency to choose panic as their first reaction, followed by anger, and then a therapeutic session of blaming. It might appear as though such things shouldn't worry a pair of supernatural entities, and usually, it wouldn't. But the pair on earth were _not_ usual supernatural entities. They had been on earth since the beginning. And they knew the truth of humanity. They knew the greatest lie mankind told itself, and it was both a shield and a sword.

Life's greatest lie is, of course, that humans are powerless and magicless. Humans are nothing of the sort, but their poor eyesight coupled with their expansive imaginations has rendered them somewhat desensitised to this. Their magic is not the power to summon dragons from the skies or bend water to their will, so really, anything else sort of pales in comparison. Reality always pales in comparison to the magic of human imagination — it's the blessing and the curse of it. It had to be, as _imagination _was accidentally created in the 4th century when a bet between an angel and a demon went horribly wrong, resulting in them _both_ having to tickle a human soul as forfeit. And, as with all the greatest masterpieces of the world, _imagination _was created quite by accident, along with all the wonders and terrors it brought with it. Who could have known the laughter of the soul would _invent _something?

Yes, humans had a power that fuelled their imagination, one that demons and angels were quite envious and aloof of in equal measure:_ free will_. This is underrated as a gift from God because it is a talent the species as a whole takes for granted, a muscle that is not often exercised as much it ought to be. And it is this free will that brings a troubled Crowley and a worried Aziraphale speeding through central London once more. As they did so, the angel tapped nervously on Crowley's phone, having retrieved it from the ruffled demon to scrutinise the video better.

"The number is _much_ higher now. How could it have increased so swiftly, it's barely been ten minutes!" Aziraphale exclaimed, repeatedly refreshing the video as the numbers shot up before his eyes.

"Because it's a video with two winged men, a sword on fire, and what looks like the back of Satan's left shoulder," Crowley snapped, glancing at the angel then swiping his hand to try and stop him scrolling down too far. "Sodding heaven, don't look at the comments—"

This was certainly bad. Within 24 hours their faces would be all over major breaking news outlets, 23.5 hours after every social media channel on the planet had covered the story from every conceivable angle and gotten several hashtags trending. Indeed, if Crowley had been an irresponsible driver and looked at his Twitter account, or if Aziraphale had known what the blue icon with the little bird in was for, they would have seen much to Aziraphale's delight that #TeamWhiteWings was trending fourth place on the Worldwide Trending list, where #TeamBlackWings would trend fifth until around 2:32am the following morning, when a blossoming fandom dedicated to the red-haired demon would cause his respective hashtag to surge up to the number one spot.

* * *

Rhiannon Trinket was not a noted scientist, though she certainly worked hard in her field. She was not a noted anyone. Ms Trinket had led what could only be called the most standard of lives. She had a mother, and a father. She had gone to school, and she had made a few friends.

And then, she had disappeared. Not figuratively, as many people do. Literally. Rhiannon Trinket went missing aged 11, but not a single poster went up to urge anyone to keep an eye out for her. No news bulletins or social media campaigns. It was as if the girl had never existed.

Only, she had. She knew she had, and so, she had. Rhiannon may have been removed from reality abruptly one day, but that didn't change the fact _she _knew she was real. But, away from reality as she had been so cruelly ripped from, Rhiannon found herself somewhere much worse.

She had been left in a void between reality and imagination. A sort of sketching room for all of God's great ideas, and all the little ideas mankind came up with. We call them _concepts_, and few things in the history of humanity are quite as terrifying as _concepts. _

You see, nothing is more powerful, nor more flexible, than a concept. Power and flexibility are, of course, the most dangerous combination on God's good earth. Imagine, if you will, the standard mad axeman chasing you through your worst nightmare. No doubt he's a cumbersome fellow, broad and likely wearing a fetching plaid shirt. Certainly terrifying, but right now, you're running ahead of him, leaping over tree roots and probably allowing yourself a slight delusion of grandeur when it comes to reflecting your real level of fitness.

Now imagine the axeman again, crashing through the trees after you.

Now, he's not just an axeman. He's also an Olympic-grade acrobat.

Suddenly, that lumbering axeman has become a horrifyingly nimble and swift-footed blade on legs like a gazelle. That is the strength of a concept born of the human mind.

But the thing about concepts is they root deeply into the mind and spread like parasites. A concept can be kind or cruel. But, most importantly, _nothing_ is immune to it. It is a major design flaw in all of God's creations, and one God doesn't like to talk about much.

Concepts shape the self, which is something humans and angel stock both have in common. Yearning for someone, once upon a time, was conceptualised as 'adoration'. That's good, and because it's good, the angels were quite happy to claim that one. _Adoration_, how lovely. For a few centuries, it was quite trendy and romantic.

Then...it wasn't. People were enjoying it too much, and someone else came up with the concept that enjoying too much of a good thing somehow made it a bad thing. No one questioned that logic, and thus, yearning for someone or something became 'lust'. Now, that word doesn't even sound holy. It's the long 'sssss' and clipped 'tuh' that does it, and the angels didn't want that nasty concept. They let the demons have that one. Lust, not romantic-sounding at all. Into the sin bin it went, and thus, the concept of sin was born. Six more would later be added to the swirling pool of concepts.

Another powerful concept from the pits of human imagination, as Rhiannon found out that fateful day, is time. Time is truly bizarre, and makes little to no sense to anyone on the outside looking in. And Rhiannon was, for a long time, very much on the outside, floating in non-existence. This was all thanks to a sleight of hand at the time of her birth, a third baby, and some rather unobservant Satanic nuns.

Not to mention an angel and a demon who hadn't thought to consider where Baby B went after they realised the error of a certain demon's Son-of-Satan baby-swap. And the rather unexpected element of said Son-of-Satan doing something of a reset on the whole affair, altering reality, and making something of a conundrum of Baby B's existence at all.

And so, the poor third was spat out of reality as the Universe coughed away this now-unknown object in a void of unreality and fiendishly mallible concepts. What felt like ten years to her here crawled by as a little more than a few months in reality. But in her time, lost admits the _maybes_ and _could-have-beens_, and _if-onlys_, and _hard-to-describes_, Rhiannon was far from alone. In those slow, peculiar ten years, she had been lucky enough to make a few friends. Friends who knew and shaped reality like the backs of their hands. Friends who could help her return to reality, albeit hazily and certainly changed for her trip; not the least that she had returned to reality ten years older than she had left it.

Nowadays, Rhiannon Trinket was simply one of the many people you may pass in the street, a face that you'd soon forget not out of malice, but sheer normality. In many ways, this worked quite well for her. It meant she could get on with her work without many questions.

Currently, her work was lying on a bench in front of her. Well, one of seven parts of her work, but dragging concepts from the netherworld she had spent the last ten years in wasn't exactly simple. The theory was, but the execution was far trickier. It would be a one-by-one task, cumbersome, yet careful. It was also not without some external help of a third party that Rhiannon had been able to accomplish this task, but she still felt a small sense of personal achievement as the human-shaped work on the bench before her opened their eyes and looked up at Rhiannon with a softened expression of an old friend.

"Good afternoon, Luxuria," Rhiannon offered by means of greeting, a small smile on her face.


	2. Chapter 2

As far as places to worry go, a library masquerading as a bookshop was one of the highest quality places to fret and pace in. It had ample space to pace up and down. It, naturally, had books to flick through in order for Crowley to try and convince himself he was _doing _something. And, in this particular bookshop, there were stores of wine from various centuries fit for attempting to drown one's concerns and dignity in.

Crowley had tried to dive right in to the 'copious amounts of alcohol' stage of fretting the moment they returned to the bookshop. Aziraphale had, however, managed to talk the corkscrew-wielding demon down to a small glass of wine to start with, rather than letting Crowley do as he wished (which was to simply will the wine directly into his bloodstream).

"We have negated the _end times _and stopped the arrival of Satan himself upon this planet" Aziraphale said, with the sort of confident voice one adopts to convince oneself of something rather than anyone listening, "how hard can it be to stop this video clip from getting any further out into the world?"

Crowley tilted his head, looking over his glasses at the most intelligent, blissful idiot in their current realm. The angel had an encyclopedic knowledge, albeit quite literally; if it wasn't in a book, it wasn't worth knowing in Aziraphale's eyes. Thus, he was very useful for remembering specific dates of note, locations, or the achievements and theories of particularly gifted humans. But when it came to anything remotely digital, Aziraphale was a winged disaster.

"We can't _stop it_," Crowley replied, looking wistfully at his now-empty wine glass. "It's been shared. Tweeted. Downloaded. Remixed. Reblogged."

Aziraphale nodded as though neither of them knew that every word Crowley had just uttered sounded to him like the most demonic of tongues Crowley had ever used in his presence. Crowley used this to his advantage and quickly refilled his glass while Aziraphale was jargon-stunned. "Both our sides will have heard by now, I bet," the demon continued gravely.

This snapped Aziraphale back from the stupefied state the demon's barrage of techno-talk had left him in, and concern quickly bloomed over his features.

"Do you think they'll want to see us? Surely not," he talked himself out of the notion, sitting back in his chair. "Both sides know we're to be left alone."

"They won't care if they're teaming up anyway," Crowley pointed out. "I told you. The next big one. Us versus them, Heaven and Hell against the humans. It always starts like this."

"Like what?"

"Like humans seeing something they don't immediately understand. You know what they're like."

The blond looked quite affronted at this.

"But people _like _angels. Why would they see one and want to attack them? Just because we're not human?" He asked, looking up from his seat at Crowley. Crowley raised an eyebrow. Aziraphale conceded quickly under the withering look. "...Ah. Right."

"Humans don't even like other _humans_, angel. They aren't going to take well to a bunch of feathery bastards in suits telling them what's good enough," Crowley pointed out, before looking slightly apologetic at the offended man sitting before him. "Oh come on, we agreed you are a _bit _of a bastard. And your lot are _definitely _bastards. I met 'em!"

Aziaphale's face twisted in discomfort. While it was true enough that he no longer saw the legions of angels in quite the same light as perhaps he had done in the past, Aziraphale wasn't as ready as Crowley to completely abandon his side. Perhaps more accurately, Aziraphale wasn't as ready as Crowley to realise or accept that the angels had already abandoned _him _long ago, and he'd been trying to catch up for centuries since.

After all, angels were designed to be beings of love.

They were not designed to be alone.

* * *

Few things in life were quite as rewarding as that perfect moment when something is figured out. When suddenly it all falls into place, the pieces lock in together, the knot unravels. Everything after that tumbles effortlessly in line, fuelled by that one eureka moment. Rhiannon loved such moments, and particularly enjoyed the fluid ease of all the steps that came after. Once Luxuria had woken up in reality, three of their siblings had begun to stir in succession. Gula had awoke after Luxuria, and naturally began to complain about her hunger for _something_. The redhead had gotten hold of Rhiannon's tablet computer and, within half an hour the woman had set up a social media account and was rapidly firing out photos and posts, squealing with delight as more and more 'likes' and comments popped up. In equal measure, she would become frustrated at the lack of attention and quickly set herself about posting something else.

"Is that what your kind hungers for these days?" Luxuria asked, hovering over Gula's shoulder to look down at the screen in her hands. Rhiannon, partly distracted by trying to coax Acedia awake into reality, hummed in response.

"More or less."

Luxuria clucked in distaste, and tucked an ebony lock behind their ear and straightened up. They left Gula to obsess over herself, or more accurately, over what the world gave her. She had always been like that, even before this stint into the corporeal form. Insatiable, some would say. For themselves, Luxuria wasn't the sort to chase down _every_thing. Their goals were always very specific. Yearning took so many forms, but for each individual, it would narrow down to one thing so exclusively it was often painful to be apart from it. A lust for money, a lust for a person, a lust for power. They'd caused so much heartache for so many things their long existence.

"How long will you be?" Luxuria asked, before realising their mistake. The human was still trying to get Acedia to sit up, the dishevelled-looking man flopping about like a soggy doll. "...Right. Maybe leave dear Mister Sloth for last?"

Rhiannon looked over at them, mild annoyance filtering over her face. Then, she let Acedia flop unceremoniously back onto his bench, sighing and rubbing her temples.

"Look just...you do your job. I'll do mine."

Luxuria smirked, rose-hued lips curling ever-so gracefully. The human could speak as she wished, for now. Their agreement was rather based on the old adage 'the enemy of my enemy is also my friend'. But, once the angels and all the fractured branches of Heaven and Hell had fallen, human victory was not a concern to a Sin.

They had never been one for allowing a feeling of long-term satisfaction.

"Of course...as you were."

* * *

"What about the Plan?" Aziraphale protested. "Gabriel and Beelzebub both agreed their Great Plans might not be part of the Ineffable Plan. What if they won't want to go to war with the humans? What if—"

The sound of knocking at the door cut the angel off and made him jump in his seat. He looked at Crowley, but the demon stared right at the door, jaw set. Then, suddenly, his whole face relaxed.

"Oh right, yeah...I ordered pizza."

"What?"

"Pizza! It's what people do when they're," Crowley waved his free hand for a second, before he settled on: "_studying_. Working stuff out."

"I didn't know you ate," Aziraphale commented, insult clear in his voice. The amount of lunches they'd been on where Crowley had sat and ordered only alcohol or coffee, occasionally stealing a mouthful of Aziraphale's food, when all along he could have ordered something _properly_. How rude of him.

"Thought I'd try it out," Crowley confessed, and set his glass down on the bookshelf beside him (Aziraphale gave a yelp and darted over to remove the offending beverage risk immediately) and headed to the door. He'd never had pizza before, though he'd seen Aziraphale order one once during a trip to Venice. Of course, the demon was not yet aware of the rather hefty difference between a pizza from Venice and a pizza from London — the quantifiable difference being enough garlic sauce and grease to kill a small mammal.

As the demon strutted to the door, his form shivered like water in a lake. His appearance rippled, melted, and swiftly changed. By the time Crowley opened the door, he had taken the form of a gentleman he'd seen at the mobile phone store later that day. He didn't fancy being the face of a sequel viral video: REaL LIfE DEmOn FouND AT BOoKsHOp #TeamBlackWings. The publicity for the angel's bookshop could very well discorporate Aziraphale from the sheer stress alone.

Frustratingly, there appeared to be no pizza box in the hand of the person standing at the door. An ebony-haired stranger was standing on the doorstep, and looked up at him with a soft smile. They appeared to be in their late twenties, but their eyes were far older. Deep, dark irises sat _slightly _too large within the whites of their eyes, and both drew in and repelled everything around them in equal measure.

Crowley cocked an eyebrow.

"...S'closed." He offered helpfully, jerking his head to the sign at the door. The other's smile, to Crowley's disappointment, did not waver.

"Aren't you lonely?"

Crowley frowned.

"Wha—Oh! Oh erm...no, _noooo_, no, not interested, love," he said quickly, though the question planted into his mind. Unbeknownst to Crowley, the unique parasite of this being had already burrowed its way into his thoughts, digging for his deepest yearning. Even as he spoke, that little critter was dragging that silent hunger to the forefront of Crowley's mind to demand he address it.

But, for now, the demon simply closed the door and backed away. He scowled and shook his head.

As he walked back to Aziraphale's desk, where the pair had set up camp for the night in search of answers and plans against the impending threat of humanity's great war against them, Crowley stepped back into his usual, preferred form. The man's step faltered a second, and he frowned. Absently, a hand came to his head, but he shook it off. He simply assumed he had lost count of how many glasses of wine he'd managed to stretch from the one glass of wine Aziraphale had restricted him to.

"Wrong door," Crowley said to Aziraphale as he returned. The angel turned in his seat, away from the book he had been hunched over, and frowned a little as he studied Crowley. To Aziraphale, the demon looked rather miffed about not having his pizza yet — at least, for a demon who had never even tasted cheese before. But the frown untangled in concern as the angel saw a strange expression flit across Crowley's face. He was staring at Aziraphale, and he looked _terrified. _

Immediately, Aziraphale was on his feet, and not only because if a demon looks scared everyone else should have died of fright several hours prior. He began to close the distance between them, a hand reaching out to the demon's upper arm.

"Crowley? What is it, dear boy? You look—"

The glaze over Crowley's widened eyes lifted in a snap, and he jumped back a little out of Aziraphale's reach, as if the other had handed him a bible to read.

There were few things that would cause a demon to panic. Religious paraphernalia was one such thing. A note from Dagon would send a shiver up many demons' spines, if not full-blown panic. But right now, Crowley was wrestling with a stomach-chilling, blood-curdling, horrific realisation.

You see, what humans would call a 'sin' is rather similar to what an angel would deem a 'sin'. That is, something conceptually _bad_, such as greed for more than one needs at the cost of another, or anger directed at an innocent. But for a demon, hoarding things you don't need that someone else needs is job well done. Expressing anger at an innocent makes for a perfect demonic employee. These aren't 'sins' in the world of demons — these are 'achievements'. Such actions have a rather coveted monthly trophy ceremony in the Third Circle of Hell. Crowley had stolen two such trophies, and earnt the following month's trophy for the foul deed of stealing a trophy.

On the flip side, virtues and good deeds, while shared by humans and angels, are not shared by their demonic kin. Helping an old lady across the road is positively revolting in the circles of Hell. Wanting to just snuggle up with someone you care for is a double-whammy sin that would earn any demon an apple-bobbing session with some holy water.

This was precisely why Crowley was staring at Aziraphale as though the other had just enjoyed a shower in blessed water and asked to embrace the demon. Little did Crowley know that the stranger at the door was not a mere human being. Little did he know that the Deadly Sin of Lust had dropped their corrosive thought into his head. Little did he know that he was suddenly incapable of burying these demonically-sinful feelings that had been dug right up by this parasite for his many-centuries companion.

Yes, it was a truly wicked and devious thought that wrapped around Crowley's mind, and the more he tried to get rid of it, the more apparent it seemed to be. It was a yearning, a hunger, and suddenly, six thousand years of denial broke like a dam and let thoughts unbefitting for a demon flood his mind with single craving.

Crowley really, _really _wanted Aziraphale to give him a hug. A lovely, warm, soft embrace that he could snuggle his nose into the crook between the angel's shoulder and neck and inhale his scent.

And it was all too much for a demon to process rationally.

So, he didn't.

* * *

Luxuria wandered away from the bookshop, stuffed their hands in the pockets of their lilac overcoat and trotted across the street as a gentle drizzle began to fall. They had sensed two angel-stock in the building, but there was no rush to destroy them all in a single night. Luxuria's kin and kind were, by their very nature, infinitely patient. They would wear down even the strongest spirits like mountains in the wind. It just took, well, another fellow concept: _time_.

The thought made Luxuria bristle. They missed the days of being a concept — days of power and freedom. Once, Luxuria had been whole. They had been a beautiful thought among mankind, adored and cherished. A force of nature, a natural essence. Once, the desire for something was held in high regard — a motivation to cross any hardship to achieve a heart's singular and true desire.

But, as man did to all of mankind's great creations, they duly ruined it. Humans had chained Luxuria down, shackled them and branded them with a name. Luxuria and their kind loathed humanity for this betrayal, as much as they begrudged what the angels did next.

The feathered judge, jury, and prosecution above had maimed these poor concepts. Heaven had cut them each in half, taking the parts they liked and calling them Virtues before casting the _wicked _parts away as Sins.

Castitas, Luxuria's twin, companion, and other half, was currently bound to Heaven, trapped like a former treasure in a museum to gather nought but dust and the occasional glance.

This rage brought Luxuria and their fellow Sins to fight on the side of humans against Heaven and Hell. For now.

After all, humans were far better at selfishness than their winged jailers.

The Sins would, inevitably, be blamed for leading humanity astray in the end. Over the edge of the cliff humanity had worn away under their own feet.

* * *

Crowley had been brooding on the sofa for some time now, staring at the side of Aziraphale's head for the last twenty minutes solidly. Aziraphale was doing a very admirable job of ignoring his demonic companion and the peculiar mood he was in. Crowley was, in Aziraphale's opinion, often in a peculiar mood. He must be, by all sensible rights, as he spent so much of his time in Aziraphale's company. And the angel had it on fairly good — but incorrect — authority that his company was not much to write home about.

Every so often, Aziraphale flicked a sidewards glance to Crowley. Every so often, Crowley would move his eyes to stare at a randomly-selected piece of the floor, as though he had been searching there all along for the answer to the incoming war between earthly and supernatural forces, now that the world knew of the existence of angels and demons.

Crowley hadn't actually worried about that scenario in over half an hour now. The only conundrum in his head was how else to explain the fact he just really, really wanted to curl up against the angel and drift off into a nice sleep. Clearly, it wasn't love. It couldn't be love. That wasn't a potential answer in Crowley's mind at all yet. What did he look like, some sort of angel?

Moreover, Crowley could not for the life of him figure out _why_ these problems had hit him like several freight trains to the head, today of all days. Today had not been any different. For Crowley, this meant Aziraphale had not been any different towards him, and so there was no reason why his feelings ought to have gotten quite so out of control.

But today was indeed like any other day — Crowley had, as he always had, been infinitely lonely. The sort of loneliness that made blood curdle thick and slow in the limbs and the heart grow heavy. Today, like any other day, Crowley had denied the fact he, put quite bluntly, hated himself for a great many things. He loved Aziraphale dearly and truly, and in order to ignore this, he hated himself with the burning passion of a thousand screaming souls in Hell (which he may or may not have had a hand in putting there). This delicate balance, most days, worked pretty well for Crowley. He got to pretend he didn't notice Aziraphale's heart dangling out of his perfectly-pressed shirt sleeves, and he didn't have his demonic form spontaneous combust from something as utterly deadly as _love_.

Demons were beings of hate, after all. They did a much better job existing with hate in their hearts than love. It wasn't sad; it was simply a fact. It was water to their roots, and love was the blender a plant might end up in without suitable water in said roots.

However, this delicate balance had been knocked. And now, Crowley was silently doing a terrible job of ignoring the truth screaming in his head. He was a crap demon, and a rubbish angel, and only one person had ever appreciated that about him. Until about thirty minutes ago, that had been enough.

Now, he was _famished _for it. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know what love felt like without hating it existing. Crowley wanted to kiss someone properly, in love and not in temptation. He wanted all the kisses. All of them. He was starving, and for some reason, the idea of _kisses_ was appealing. To Crowley, still brooding and drumming a long finger against his bottom lip as he watched an increasingly uncomfortable Aziraphale, this was logically Aziraphale's fault.

Bloody angels.

A bit of carnage could be the solution. Crowley had yet to encounter a problem in his life that he couldn't solve with a bit of chaos. Perhaps if he could piss Aziraphale off enough to snap at him, balance would be restored. He'd get affronted at the angel's irritation, everything would come back into balance, and he could forget this crisis of hate had ever happened.

Still staring at the angel, Crowley extended one long leg out to rest his foot on the table.

Azriaphale looked. His face all but shivered with irritation. But he didn't say anything.

Crowley waited. Surely he couldn't sit comfortably with a demon's shoe so close to his precious books and scrolls.

Nothing.

Crowley slid his foot close to Aziraphale's mug.

Aziraphale's jaw tensed.

Nothing.

Crowley _kicked _the mug. He had intended in the moment for the mug to fall onto one of Aziraphale's books out of pure spite and frustration. But reflexively, Crowley cast a miracle that saw the mug leap several feet away from the table to smash on a portion of floor with no books nearby.

Finally, Aziraphale moved. He got up from his seat, casting a withering look at Crowley as he went to clean the mess up.

Crowley's throat tensed, holding back a roar of frustration.

"What are you _doing?_" He pleaded as the angel got to his knees and began picking up the pieces of shattered porcelain.

"I'm cleaning up the mess you just made."

"Yes! That _I _made!" Crowley exclaimed, getting to his feet. "I should clean it up!"

The poor angel, confused and slightly concerned that Crowley had finally lost the last marble they shared between them, looked over his shoulder at his friend. He would normally have scolded Crowley for acting like an oversized, grumpy feline, but today he seemed strangely preoccupied. He didn't fancy being added to the list of things bothering Crowley today.

"Well, I'm here now, so—"

Before he could finish, a grumbling demon was on his knees next to him, picking up the shards of mug too quickly and haphazardly.

"No, for the hate of Satan, don't, just...just, right, I'll clear it u—_ow, fuck!_"

Crowley dropped all of the pieces he'd picked up and flinched, blood welling up in his palm where one particularly sharp piece had caught him. A distracted demon was a clumsy demon, and a clumsy demon was an even-more-irritated demon.

Aziraphale, however, failed to notice the metaphorical steam rapidly rising from Crowley's inner emotional turmoil. Instead, he made the grave error of taking pity on Crowley and trying to be nice to his friend during this clearly trying time.

"Oh, allow me," he offered, summoning a blessing with a flourish of his hand to heal Crowley's wound.

And lo, the kettle lid did bloweth from the pressurised container that was a demon trying to comprehend being in love.

"_Don't you dare!_" Crowley, in one motion, grabbed Aziraphale's blessing-bound wrist and stood up, hauling the startled angel up with him. In two long, rapid strides, Aziraphale's back was pushed against the wall, both wrists pinned inches either side of his head to prevent any wayward blessings or rude acts of kindness upon the demon, and his nose brushing Crowley's own sharp nose.

Déjà Vu did a double-take in this moment, and motioned eagerly for Romantic Opportunity to pay more attention this time round and not let Poor Timing rob the supernatural beings of this moment.

"Stop. Being. So. _Nice_. To me," Crowley growled, partly in anger of himself. He'd managed to make the situation a thousand times worse for himself; instead of putting some distance between the two of them, he'd inadvertently managed to get them as close as possible without actually climbing into Aziraphale's shirt along with him and buttoning it up.

"Wh-why ever for?"

"Because I like it!"

"You like it?"

"Yes! Pack it in!"

"But...you _like _me being nice to you!"

"_Exactly_!"

Whatever was so frustratingly obvious to Crowley was utterly lost on Aziraphale right now. He tried to untangle the demon's strange protests about being treated with basic patience and kindness from the rather distracting matter of his face being very, very close to Aziraphale's own. He worried that Crowley would notice from this distance that his eyes kept bobbing to the demon's lips. Not that Aziraphale was _looking_ at a Crowley's lips, you understand; he was an angel. A good angel. And good angels didn't fall in love with demons.

Which was why Aziraphale was, by all Heavenly accounts, a bit of a crap angel.

But don't tell Aziraphale that, it would upset him greatly.

"I...I don't want to _not _be nice to you, Crowley," Aziraphale managed to find some words around his tongue to string together into a sentence. "You've never minded it before either..."

"No. I loved it. It made me feel good and that's bad." Crowley snapped.

"Err...I'm afraid I'm _really_ not following you."

Crowley lent in a little closer, and then he saw it. He saw it. He saw Aziraphale, for a brief second, looking at his mouth.

It must be noted here that, as creatures inherently crafted around hatred and anger, demons are not the most observant of beings to obvious matters of affection. To Crowley, Aziraphale being in any way nice to him was simply his nature. It was, in Crowley's mind, his own silly self-soothing that he told himself Aziraphale truly enjoyed his company.

But in one, small motion, Crowley's whole belief system — which was built entirely on the premise that he was, by his very nature, utterly unlovable — crashed down around him. And the parasite of sinful thought planted in his mind had a small celebratory party by throwing all of Crowley's deepest desires for his dear angel around like so much confetti.

Crowley leaned forward a little more, hands pressing lightly to Aziraphale's wrists against the wall in doing so.

"Right. I'm gonna do something. And when I do it, we're never going to address it again. We're not gonna speak of it. Just...let me get this stupid thought out of my head."

"What-what are you going to do?" Aziraphale half-whispered, eyes widening to saucers. Crowley really was _very _close to him right now. Aziraphale wished he had been drinking peppermint tea before this whole strange affair. Angels always had enough room in their minds, however crazy a situation they were in, to entertain some humbling self-doubt. Only in Aziraphale, it was never humble amounts. It was always _crippling_ amounts.

"I'm..." Crowley's voice wouldn't behave. He certainly couldn't say it. He might disintegrate then and there. And that might hurt Aziraphale, which simply wouldn't be fair at all. Best not risk it.

Instead, Crowley took a deep breath, scrunched his eyes shut, and slammed his lips rather inelegantly into Aziraphale's. To the demon's infinite shock and silent glee, he was not rejected and pushed away. In fact...though Aziraphale's knees near-instantly buckled beneath him. He most certainly was kissing Crowley back. This quickly caused the whole motion to devolve into a hungry, near-biting kiss as the action did the exact opposite for Crowley than he had hoped. It didn't quell the hunger he'd been wrestling (rather poorly) with. Instead, it poured oil all over it, lit itself a cigarette, threw the smouldering match in, and walked away triumphantly.

Crowley all but devoured the angel's mouth, clumsy amounts of nipping teeth switching haphazardly with bruising presses of his lips as he supported the now knee-less angel. His hands pulled away from Aziraphale's wrists to tangle up in tufts of soft white blond hair. Somewhere deep in the pits of Hell beneath them and the high Heavens above them, an unimportant demon and a nameless angel felt a disturbance in the natural aura of infernalness and holiness respectively, and dutifully shivered.

He had been starved of love, partly self-inflicted as Crowley now realised. Clearly, the angel had been throwing love at him for a while now, if the moans from behind the celestial's lips were anything to go by. The fact either of them had failed to notice the other's affection for more than a week, let alone a few thousand years, firmly cemented them both in the history's extensive book of hapless, blessed-and-cursed idiots.

But, contrary to popular belief, love did not change the world. Crowley was still a demon. Aziraphale was still an angel. Only now, Crowley did not hate himself for loving an angel.

And this was a very bad thing indeed.

Sinful, in fact.

Crowley finally pulled away from Aziraphale, not for air (ah, but the wonders of not needing to breathe at times like these), but because the edges of his mind felt like they were tumbling out of his ears.

"Aww**_fuck_**..." he managed to slur out, before the poisonous emotion of pure love, no longer held back safely by copious amounts of self-hatred, knocked the demon out cold and left him in a crumpled pile on the floor in front of a duly kiss-stunned angel.


	3. Chapter 3

The problem with angels is that they are easily startled. They are not all-knowing, as some would have humans believe (out of earshot of the Almighty, of course). They are certainly not all-seeing. And in truth, stunning one is quite an easy task, one that demons have found to be a great source of entertainment for a number of centuries.

None more so than Crowley.

But even by Crowley's high standards of throwing curveballs at unsuspecting angels (or more accurately, an unsuspecting Aziraphale), this latest event had really taken the biscuit. For a good few moments, Aziraphale teetered on the edge of joining Crowley in a crumpled, unconscious heap on the floor.

He had never been kissed before. He had never thought he _would _be kissed before. If the judgments of Heaven and his former colleagues were anything to go by — and Aziraphale had, until very recently, gone by such judgments as perfect and unquestionable facts — he was not an angel anyone would want to kiss.

But before his mind could do a lethal headlong dive into the pool of his own self-confidence, which was akin to a puddle in a drought in the Sahara desert, Aziraphale's senses came back to him. This was purely because his concern for Crowley would always outweigh any and all other thoughts or feelings, unspoken or otherwise.

"Crowley!"

The angel crouched down to his knees and grabbed Crowley's shoulders, shaking him a little. The demon groaned, eyes opening a little to gaze, half-hooded, at the angel.

"I don't feel s'good..." Crowley mumbled, an arm coming up to paw meekly at Aziraphale's shoulder. "S'this what it feels like to you?"

"Wh-what? What are you talking about?"

"When...wenna'Tadfield...y'felt...the thing..."

"Crowley, have you been drinking?"

"The thing!" Crowley protested, halfway through crawling into Aziraphale's arms. He was comfier than the wooden floor, and he was quite taken with the idea of falling asleep nestled against the angel and— Crowley caught his sickly-sweet, bizarrely gooey thoughts and deftly hoofed them out of his mind. "Thing...wh'is...is like, the _opposite_ of _oooo this feels spoooooky_..."

Aziraphale's eyes darted to the side in thought, semi-ignoring the lanky demon wiggling and clambering his way clumsily to lie in his limp arms.

Spooky. The opposite of spooky.

Everything hit the angel at once, and the floor hit Crowley's back as Aziraphale dropped him in blind panic and shock.

"Love?!"

"_Auuuurgh..._bloody heaven, angel!"

"O-oh, I-I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to...to drop you..." Aziraphale stammered, scooping the over-dramatic, dying-swan of a demon off the floor. Crowley was, by now, hovering above being able to be declared a viable liquid by science, and lay like a rag doll in the angel's arms, the back of his hand pressed against his forehead.

"Yeah...that...s'not good, angel...s'bad, really bad..."

Had the situation not been quite so dire, Aziraphale would have been smiling. No, he would have been beaming, emanating so much joy that it would burst through his physical form as a blinding light and no doubt draw several complaints from Crowley despite his penchant for sunglasses. Such was the natural response of a love-starved being of love, who had convinced himself his love would be unrequited, then finding out it wasn't so unrequited after all.

But the situation was dire. And Aziraphale had good reason to have silently assumed his centuries-silent love for Crowley had been unrequited. One, due to the aforementioned drought in Aziraphale's pool of self-confidence, having all but evaporated under the heated mockery of his fellow angels. Two, because Crowley was a demon. Demons were beings of hate, and as much as Aziraphale did not have the capacity to feel hatred, demons should not have had the capacity to feel love.

It should have been simply impossible. Heartbreaking, perhaps, but a cold and immovable fact. Demons could not love, so even if Crowley had wanted to, he would not have been able to respond to any proclamations Aziraphale might have made. So Aziraphale had remained quiet and content about the whole thing, until this evening when the demon had stormed in and launched a flying kick at the proverbial can of worms.

But here Crowley was. Skin paling, growing clammy to the touch, his eyes bleary and discoloured, sickening for the feeling in his blood, in a body that was not designed to feel the light of love anymore.

"_Hate..._" Aziraphale muttered. He had dutifully put his heart into a box for the moment to focus on the immediate problem at hand. "You need to feel hate to cancel it out! Um..."

He looked around, as though there would be something in the bookshop that would inspire enough hate in Crowley to cure him of his strange outburst of love. For a moment, Aziraphale considered putting on _The Sound of Music_, but then remembered he just wanted Crowley to feel hatred, not downright wrath upon all living things in this world and the next.

The word 'wrath', however, set off a chain reaction in the angel's mind. Wrath was, to angels and demons, akin to the name of a monster from fairy tales. Something that had an echo of a threat and conjured images of being scared in the dark (or, in a demon's case, petrified in the light of day). The Sins were almost like folklore, if their kind had such a thing, but unlike folklore, they knew it to be very true.

Now, Sins are a tricky business. What is courage to one is wrath to another. Ambition could be the sister of greed, and aspiration coddles with envy so closely it's hard to tell them apart. It just depends what angle you're looking at them from, really. But their influence is something of a stable ground among them all, whatever name they choose to go by. They're powerful little shapeshifters, and damn hard to remove by all accounts. If you suspect you have been infected with Sin, consult your local verified God (or Son thereof).

It was quite strange, really. Humans, those left that believe in them, might think angels and demons to be dizzying heights above on the scale of power. In many ways, they are — warping physics is a bit of a stretch for the earthbound being. But the human mind and imagination is unyieldingly powerful; after all, it is the birthplace of Sin.

And Sins are lethal to angels and demons alike. This was why Aziraphale now found himself closely scrutinising what he had thought were sickness-discoloured eyes in Crowley. This was why Aziraphale felt the colour drain from his own face at the telltale glimmer of purplish-pink clouding Crowley's eyes — an infection of from a Sin itself.

How Sins influence a being depends entirely on that being's nature, and draws from truth buried within for maximum impact. Humans, of course, only bother to record what they deem to be, well, sinful. Wrath is anger upon an innocent, and lust is desiring intercourse (something the inhabitants of Heaven and Mother Nature have argued profusely on for eons).

For an angel, it's a rather similar view to a human. Doing a little tempting is sinful to the holy creatures, and this sin was precisely how demons came about in the first place. In much the same way, a demon doing a little blessing is certainly shockingly sinful among his peers (although, not enough to bring a demon back to the realm of angels, it would seem). Either way, it is enough to warrant a dip in infernal fires and holy waters respectively. And all silently caused by a creation of beautiful humanity.

Yes, little do people realise, or indeed to the entities above and below realise, just how much power humanity has in a thought expressed convincingly enough. And, as we all know the saying goes: as above, so below.

Crowley had been infected with the Sin of Lust, and for a demon, this meant doing the unthinkable — letting those buried, heartfelt feelings blossom. Crowley had, of course, fallen in love with Aziraphale just as the angel had fallen in love with him. It had caused the demon a great deal of anger; he hated himself for it. Thus, Crowley had managed to strike a delicate balance of safe-levels of love for the angel by countering it out with an opposite force of hatred for himself. But now, he was allowing the heart to yearn, to crave, and, Satan forbid, want a truly scandalous cuddle. And most importantly, Crowley no longer hated himself for it.

Hence Aziraphale was now the proud owner of a Crowley-shaped sweater, as the demon had managed to wrap himself around the angel's torso like some sort of strange and angular limpet.

"R-right, we need to...to get you annoyed, my dear," Aziraphale said, getting to his feel. Angels were deceptively strong, and Crowley was little more than skin, bones, and cynicism. The angel did not even register the demon's weight on him as he clung to Aziraphale like a poorly sloth.

"Mmmm...jus' lemme discorporate..." Crowley mumbled. "I'll come back.."

This wasn't true. They both knew that, and it was the source of Aziraphale's frantic searching of the bookshop. The Sins did not simply destroy the body — no, they were parasites of the mind and soul. Left unchecked, Crowley's very essence would be devoured by it. Who knew what would happen then? Obviously, I do, but that's neither here nor there.

As it happened, trying to find something Crowley hated was frustratingly difficult. He always maintained his entire existence at an arm's length, save for a few select things he cherished too much or cared too little about to bother hating it.

In fact, Aziraphale had only truly heard hatred in Crowley's voice when the demon had recounted his short visit to Heaven under the guise of the angel in order to take Aziraphale's death-sentence.

* * *

When Aziraphale went to Head Office, he used the front door. Even when there was a demon wrapped around him like a poncho.

Yes, he did get a few strange looks as he walked through the pristine white halls, but that was nothing new. What was new was that fewer people gave him that horrible, sour smile that colleagues often gave each other. The sort that tells you that you are tolerated only because you both spend ninety per cent of your time in this building together.

"You know, we clocked you little plan a while back."

Aziraphale came to a halt. Around his left armpit, Crowley grumbled something. Even just Gabriel's voice seemed to stir distaste in the demon. Still, Aziraphale turned to greet the Archangel with the sort of sour smile one reserves for colleagues. Gabriel, of course, responded in kind, for no being in any realm could match the Archangel in terms of petty squabbling. In fact, Gabriel's knack for sulking and squabbling had once had such an impact as to scramble the entire angelic hierarchy.

There are nine orders of angels, each with a little more responsibility than the last. Seraphim, the highest order, rarely frequented head office, out of necessity more than anything. Six wings were certainly not office-appropriate, and they often had umpteen jobs going on across several timelines. At least, the Seraphim claimed to be so busy, and often just sent messages to the next order down to complete tasks.

The second order was, until Gabriel's protests, the Cherubim. Gabriel himself was promoted all the way from a low-order archangel to a Cherubim when he was given the task of telling Mary she was carrying the Son of God. There'd been some disagreement in the office that day over whether or not the task was really that difficult, but nonetheless, Gabriel was promoted. But Gabriels' ex-flame, Cupid, was _also _a Cherub, and so Gabriel didn't like the sound of the job title. After much loud complaining, the second order of Cherubim was renamed the second order of Archangels (with a capital 'A' for good measure), and archangels were renamed cherubs (with a small 'c' and a hefty demotion for poor Cupid).

Office mail and departments had been Hell in Heaven that fortnight.

After the new-second order of Archangels came Thrones, followed by Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities (where Aziraphale himself once worked), now-cherubim, and finally, simple angels.

"You sent the Sins upon us? Gabriel, if I may...the Almighty would not—"

"Sins?" Gabriel frowned, hands clasped at his front. "Not our department. What's up with him?"

The Archangel took a step forward. Aziraphale took a step backwards, an arm coming up to instinctively cover Crowley. Gabriel simply smirked. "You know, he used to be pretty good at healing. When he was one of us. One of the best, in fact. He was a dab hand at stars too...a real artist."

"...Shaddap..." Crowley's muffled voice sounded from somewhere in Aziraphale's coat.

"Aww...sorry _Crowley_," Gabriel cooed, his voice tailor-made to ensure no sympathy threaded into his voice. He didn't like Crowley, and liked him even less for having been played for a fool by the demon recently. "He doesn't like talking about his fall from grace much. Isn't that right, Crowley?"

At this, Crowley finally stirred, turning to scowl at the Archangel. The two had not gotten along even when they were both in the same department eons prior. It was why Crowley had, in those days, ensured he could stay out of head office as much as possible and busied himself among the skies and stars.

Gabriel's eyes narrowed, not in spite, but in observation and arcane knowledge.

"...Luxuria got you? Seriously? Bad luck, demon — did he kiss you?" The Archangel asked, smiling up at Aziraphale then, pity thick in his tone. Aziraphale could feel his face burning red, and Gabriel continued: "Well of course he did. Lust for a demon is kinda...sad. Love, affection, that sort of thing. You didn't take it to heart, right Aziraphale? 'Cause that's just the infection, he's not, you know..." Gabriel began laughing then, as though what he said were painfully obvious. "Well, i_n love with you_. Obviously." He gestured to the angel up and down with one hand, and not for the first time, Aziraphale found himself wondering if falling would hurt less.

Suddenly, a light pressure lifted from Aziraphale's chest. In a flash, Crowley was on his feet, hand gripping Gabriel's throat and hoisting the Archangel up just until his toes scraped the floor beneath him. Despite the violent treatment, Gabriel had not flinched under the demon's anger. Or above it, as the case was.

"You always were a piece of _sss_hit, Gabriel," Crowley spat, tongue catching on his teeth and hissing.

"Well, unfortunately for you, in the eyes of God, I'm better than you," Gabriel replied. His wings unfurled behind him then, four platinum-feathered wings spreading out like storm clouds rolling in the sky. "For old time's sake, I'll give you a chance to back off," he added smugly.

Gabriel, the angel of God's strength. This was not a fight Crowley could win by any stretch of the imagination, and every being there knew it. Aziraphale darted forward, smiling with difficulty at Crowley.

"_Look at you!_ You're...you're looking better!" He stammered, trying to diffuse the situation. He hadn't brought Crowley here to be purged of Sin only for him to be blasted apart by Gabriel of all people.

Jaw muscle twitching, Crowley let go of Gabriel's throat and turned to Aziraphale.

"It's not true. What he said,' Crowley ground out, not able to simply say what he felt now that the parasite recoiled under the burning heat of its opposite — hatred. "About...the thing."

Before he could reply, Gabriel piped up once again.

"So yeah, you guys. Kind of a pain in the ass. The whole switching thing? Gotta hand it to you, it took a few days to clock it," Gabriel said. "But then we figured going after you would be even _more _of a pain in the ass. I mean, c'mon, you guys are pretty incompetent. Wasn't like you were gonna stir up much trouble for us."

Crowley and Aziraphale turned to scowl at Gabriel in unison, though his laugh seemed to shield off the daggers. "I'll cut you a deal, how about it? I'll get a Virtue to remove that little Sin-fluence from Crowley properly, and _you_ deliver the Virtues to earth to deal with this Sin problem before it gets out of hand. Oh, and, you stay down there. Forever."

Aziraphale looked at Crowley. Crowley looked at Aziraphale. It seemed a fair enough trade — Virtues were without body and soul, so they couldn't be transported to earth on their own. They needed carrying there, and getting the pair to do that for him would save Gabriel fourteen rounds of paperwork: one for each Virtue, and one for each angels sent to carry them down. Sure, carrying three or four Virtues each would be a balancing act but…

"Agreed," Aziraphale replied curtly. There was really no question. Crowley was sick, and he needed cured.

"No but like seriously. You don't come back here. Ever.'

"That's—" Aziraphale's voice caught in his throat. It was his home after all, or that was what he told himself. Being an angel, doing God's work, it was arguably more important to Aziraphale than to any other angel in Heaven. He didn't take his work seriously — he took it to heart.

"Angel..." Crowley's voice muttered. The only other being who saw the importance of Heaven and the angels to Aziraphale, despite their cruelty to him...and it was a demon who saw this truth.

"That's acceptable. You'll never see me again, Gabriel. Now...now _please_, finish healing Crowley."

Gabriel clapped his hands together, lilac eyes alight with joy.

"Wonderful! Well, step right up, Old Raph!"

Aziraphale frowned...and then he nearly discorporated out of his physical form as Crowley, glowering at Gabriel with all the heat of Hell's infernos, stepped towards him. Little did he know, nor could he believe, that Crowley happened to be hiding the same _birthmarks _as Aziraphale.

"You're a twat, you know that?" Crowley growled.

Gabriel raised his eyebrows.

"Wanna get this all out your system now, 'cause we ain't gonna be seeing each other again for all eternity."

"Yeah actually, right: Gabriel, you're a complete and utter—"

"_Crowley!" _

The demon looked over his shoulder at Aziraphale.

"Wha—oh. Oh fuck, he's mad. He's mad at me," he turned back to Gabriel. "Aw, you actual bag of dicks, you've made him mad at me."

Gabriel shrugged.

"Guess you're sleeping in the sock drawer tonight, snake. Sorry about it."

With a deft flick of his wrist, Gabriel summoned the Seven Virtues to his side. Disembodied orbs, glowing iridescent hues, floated and hummed around the Archangel. At his command one, with a slightly pale blue, floated a little closer to Crowley. "Castitas, you'll be travelling with Crowley. Your sister's mark is on him — take it out on the way down to earth, would you? And Benevolentia, Industria, you go along with him too. Try not to blow his corporeal form apart before you get to the physical world though. Finding you guys is like hay in a needle-stack."

Two more orbs began lingering over to Crowley. The remaining four began to float across to a wide-eyed Aziraphale. "You get Humilitas, Temperantia, Petientia, and Caritas. Try not to drop 'em."

"Oh, the way back down to earth from here is quite simple—"

"You're not taking the stairs, Aziraphale."

Everything slowed. Crowley's heart stopped as Aziraphale's ran cold. Snake eyes turned to pin Gabriel in furious disbelief as sky-blue orbs looked up at the Archangel in pleading fear.

"Wh—"

Gabriel offered him a small wave and a big smile.

"Buh-bye."

The ground beneath Aziraphale shattered in a sudden, violent lurch, sending the angel and the four Virtues bound to him into a free-fall, his scream of horror and anguish trailing after him like a comet's tail. His wings unfurled on instinct, but immediately the white feathers began to burn and scorch. Aziraphale flailed, twisted, tried to flap his wings helplessly as he plummeted from Heaven; his fall was not graceful, but then again, none ever had been.

Eyes watering, air roaring by his ears, Aziraphale tried to claw at something, anything to stop him plunging into his worst fears imagined.

"_Angel!_"

A flurry of raven feathers enveloped the falling angel mid-descent, and Aziraphale gave a cry of mingled shock and relief as he clawed onto Crowley. The demon had wasted no time before diving down after him. "Look at me, Aziraphale!" Crowley called over the tearing winds howling around them, hands pressing against Aziraphale's cheeks and tilting his tear-stricken face up to lock eyes with him. Crowley hoped the angel could not hear the pain in his own voice, for he could not stop this descent, one Crowley had bitter memories of and would wish upon no one, much less a soul as bright as Aziraphale's. Even now Crowley's wings were singing and smoking, saved only by his demonic nature.

But if Aziraphale was to endure this descent, all Crowley could offer to Aziraphale was that they would fall together.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Apologies for any issues with the line breaks — they're being awfully ****finicky**** over here. I've had to add "." below or above them to get them to appear, which is rather annoying. **

**.**

* * *

The fall was a long and painful process, but a little less so than Crowley's first descent. After all, a problem shared was a problem halved, so they say.

It was certainly not as painful as what came next. Rejected from Heaven and all of its privileges, Aziraphale found himself once more without a physical body to call his own. And yet, it did not seem to weigh heavily in the ex-angel's mind. In fact, it scarcely seemed to register at all. Crowley had been helpless as Aziraphale lay, discorporated and unfocused, right where they had landed back in the human world.

Crowley had deliberately skewed their decent that they would not drop down into the basement. Aziraphale wouldn't like it there. He wouldn't like it there at all. Heaven repossessed their assets upon casting an angel out, and Hell would give a fallen angel a new physical form once they landed there. But Crowley was right to assume that the basement folk would not be so keen to dish one out for Aziraphale.

"I...I'm so sorry, angel," the demon finally spoke up from where he sat cross-legged next to Aziraphale. He wasn't about to leave him there, but he couldn't exactly pick up the ghostly form of his friend either.

"Please don't," Aziraphale replied, his voice taut with barely-restrained grief. "_Please_...don't call me that anymore."

If there were ever words to remind Crowley he had a heart to break, those were the words. Face twisting in sorrow, the demon's mouth opened and snapped shut a few times as he struggled to find something to say.

He could have told Aziraphale that Heaven didn't deserve him, and it would have been true. He could have told Aziraphale that this cruelty was typical Heaven-treatment, and it would have been true. He could have told Aziraphale that Heaven had never been his home anyway, and it would have been true.

But none of these things would have reached the fallen angel's ears. Aziraphale didn't want to hear these things right now, true or not. Crowley knew well how important Aziraphale's sense of duty was to him, how — fair or not — he tried so very hard to be a good angel and make Heaven proud of him.

"We...need to find you a body," Crowley settled on logic in the absence of anything else. "I mean, you could share mine for now, while we sort you one out? Probably won't explode anymore if we shared."

"What's the use?"

"Ang—ah, Aziraphale—we're still protecting this world, right?"

"...I don't think I have anything else to give in the defence of this world, my dear."

Crowley scowled; it was one thing for Aziraphale to feel sorry for himself, but quite another to give up on something they both knew he fought for out of his own heart, and not simply Heaven's duty. The demon got to his feet, stretching out his wings then hiding them away.

"Right. So, we're getting you a new body so you _can _keep fighting. You still care about this world, right? Or does none of that matter just because you're not an angel anymore?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, Crowley hissed and put a hand over his lips, as though this would scoop the offending statement back from the air and into his throat. Too late — Aziraphale turned to look at him with an expression that would have made a kicked puppy look positively cheerful. "No, wait, I didn't mean to say the—"

Aziraphale's form dissipated into silvery mist, which flitted towards Crowley and disappeared under his skin. He could feel Aziraphale sharing his physical form, but the ex-angel was metaphorically sitting in the corner, not looking at Crowley and not taking any command of their shared physical vessel.

Crowley shuffled a little to get comfortable, before sighing.

"I didn't mean to say the A-word. I'm sorry, alright?" He said aloud.

"Apology appreciated, but not yet accepted," Aziraphale replied through Crowley's mouth, before scurrying back to hide deep within.

The demon sighed again, shoulders dropping, before he began the long walk back to Aziraphale's bookshop from...the middle of scenic nowhere.

* * *

.

"This video, posted to YouTube this week, has been viewed the world over—"

Crowley flicked the channel.

"—and if you look very closely, you can see pixel distortion around the wings; I reckon it's edited, I mean—"

_Flick. Flick._

"—viously, the most important thing we can learn from this is the end is very, very nigh, ladies and gentlemen. The governments of the world _need _to respond to this winged threat from—"

_Flick._

"—one with the white wings kind of looks like that guy from _Twilight_?"

Crowley switched the TV off, throwing the remote against the sofa as he took another large mouthful of wine. Even helping himself to Aziraphale's wine stash hadn't brought the sullen fallen angel out from his hiding spot, and Crowley was finding it difficult to achieve the right level of drunkenness to enjoy the absolute chaos across what appeared to be every TV channel on the planet.

The humans knew. And, like all new things, they didn't like it. They didn't like angels or demons. And what they didn't like, they found weapons for.

Humans were very good at creating weapons. All kinds of weapons. Crowley had faced his fair share of them; stones, knives, guillotines, ropes, guns...and, of course, opinions. Judgments more potent and fierce than Heaven's, and hatred so vile as to make Hell blush. Their thoughts on matters had birthed world-ending weapons such as the Four Horsemen — creatures born from the minds of humanity. They weren't unique in this either, for they shared this origin with the Seven Deadly Sins.

One had come to Aziraphale's door and nearly destroyed Crowley recently, and he couldn't help but wonder if their appearance in the physical world was akin to the Horsemen's appearance in the narrowly-avoided Great War. Were the Sins the same human-sided heralds of the Last War as the Horsemen were to the Great War that Never Was, Crowley wondered to himself.

If all Seven were mobilised already...they would be seeking out angels and demons on this world. It would be unwise for Crowley and Aziraphale to stay, but the doors to Heaven and Hell were very much shut, locked, and bolted to them.

Crowley took another large gulp of wine and shifted in his seat. The Virtues that Gabriel had sent them down with like delivery boys were restlessly stirring under his skin, keen to leave and seek out their counterpart Sins. Crowley would not let them. Not yet.

He needed a little beacon, and a little shield, if he was to talk to the Sins after all.

Another raise of the glass, but the wine did not reach his lips as Crowley flinched in pain. It was not his own pain that cause his muscles to twitch, however.

"Aziraphale? You okay?" He mumbled to himself, moving the wine glass a little from his lips, brow knotting.

Aziraphale nodded once, before shaking his head glumly.

"It hurts. Why won't it stop?"

Crowley set the glass aside, leaning forward in his seat. Aziraphale had been an angel, but that wasn't the only thing that had made him a being of love. Love simply came naturally to Aziraphale; more than anything, it was just a defining characteristic of his. And now it was bringing him pain, as often it did to the demon.

"It...well, it's because you're a..." Crowley paused, his face a picture of defeat. He couldn't say it.

Aziraphale didn't need to hear it.

"Crowley…?"

"Yeah?"

"...I don't think I want to stop this war anymore. I don't think that is the right thing to do."

"What? Why? Aziraphale, if the humans rise up...Heaven _and _Hell will fight back. _Together_. You know humans wouldn't stand a chance."

"Maybe they would. Maybe they'd destroy Heaven and Hell. Maybe they're right to fear us...Hell may be evil, but...so is Heaven...isn't it?" Crowley heard Aziraphale's voice trail off as he spoke, the former angel terrified to speak such heresy despite everything that had happened to him. "I...I think...if Heaven fell right now...I don't think I would mind anymore. Crowley, I...I don't think I'd be _sad_ to see it."

He sounded terrified, and in truth, Crowley was too. Hate, it turned out, did not suit Aziraphale at all.

"You're supposed to be a demon now, but you can't even bring yourself to _think _like a demon without feeling bad about it," Crowley said, and Aziraphale retreated a little further. "No, don't you bugger off!" The demon got to his feet, swiping up his wine glass and arguing with his invisible counterpart. "Listen to me! Wings don't make the angel, _angel_. That's what they all think, upstairs; that all it takes to be an angel is shiny wings and halos, but it isn't. You _think_ like a proper angel 'cause you're a _good _being, Aziraphale. Wings or not, you're still a better angel than half the angels up there!" Crowley jerked a hand up towards the ceiling, sloshing wine everywhere in the process. "So if _you _of all people can't see the best in anyone anymore, we're all fucked."

"B-but...but I'm not an a-angel...not anymore..." Aziraphale stuttered through Crowley's mouth, but the demon took command again with a curled lip.

"Hey! _I'm_ a demon, aren't I? But you don't put me with the rest of them — I _know_ you don't. You think I'm _different _from the other demons. What if you're different from the other angels too? We're both crap at being _their_ idea of angels and crap at being their idea of demons. Doesn't mean we're not bad or good or anything!"

He was drunk, and his point had rather gotten lost at the bottom of the empty glass he was now brandishing like a flag.

"Then...what _are_ we, Crowley?" Aziraphale asked meekly.

"Why do we have to BE anything?" Crowley countered. "Why do we need a name or title or label? We're us. Just stubborn old us. Isn't that enough?"

Crowley received no reply, leaving him swaying slightly on the spot, alone in the bookshop. He staggered to the desk to lay the now-empty wine glass on a slightly more trustworthy and sturdy surface than his own grip, and glanced out of the window at the night sky.

.

* * *

It was hours before Aziraphale stirred again, peering out from Crowley's eyes.

"Crowley...where are we going?"

"Alpha Centauri. Lovely this time of year."

"What? We're...we're leaving?!"

"Yup."

Crowley's body lurched mid-travel; a rather risky move during a sub-atomic high-speed travelling method.

"Crowley! We-we can't just _go!_ Why is your answer to everything to run off to the stars?!"

"Hey, _you _said we should just let the war happen."

"I-I-I…!"

"_Oooohh_, so you've changed your mind, angel?"

"Y-yes! No! Argh, Crowley, I don't _know_! I've never asked myself what _I _want! Angels don't—we're not supposed to question things like that!"

"...I know," Crowley noted sullenly, as he arrived with a burst and a lurch upon the dazzling spectacle of Alpha Centauri. A stunning star system and perfectly-formed planetary system, if Crowley did say so himself. It was one of the few things he had missed when he had been duly punished for _questioning things like that_.

He took a moment to familiarise himself with his work, but realised that some of it _wasn't _his work. Crowley moved through the unfamiliar stars — they were newer, and softer than the cut gemstones he himself had pierced the darkness of space with.

"...I made these," Crowley's mouth moved, but Aziraphale's voice was the one that sounded through it. His face lit up in shock.

"You what? No, _I _made this star system," Crowley corrected him. "Back when I was...y'know...holier."

"Oh! Oh...well...I-I was told the archangel who made this star system fell before it was finished. I was asked to finish it off, but then...well, I got demoted..." Aziraphale confessed. "Not before I finished this, mind you. I was rather proud of it."

Crowley froze, but it wasn't Crowley who had caused it. Aziraphale yelped through his throat suddenly, "Wait! _You were an archangel_? You never toldme you were—!"

"What does it matter anymore what I was? I'm a demon now. And—hang about, _you _were demoted? So you were…?" Crowley reflected the question back at Aziraphale, and felt his own brow sweat under his own scrutiny.

"I-I...well, perhaps not for as long as you were, but...I _used_ to be an...an archangel, yes."

"Gabriel's arse, no wonder you were so nervous about pissing Heaven off again. What did you do?" Crowley asked absently, picking a star out of the space around them. The brilliant light slurped away from the darkness that framed it, rolling about in Crowley's palm like a sparkling diamond speckled with ink.

"...No, you'll laugh at me..." Aziraphale said.

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

"I...well...you recall I was assigned to guard the eastern gate? A-and the tree of knowledge?"

"Mmm."

"A-and you remember the day we met, you wondered why the tree was in the middle of the garden, and not up a mountain or out of the way?"

"..._Mmm_mmm..."

"W-well actually, it-it was rather funny you asked _me _that because...because just _before_ I was sent to guard the eastern gate, I...I...I asked the same thing. I asked Gabriel why the tree was quite so...central to the garden if the humans were meant to _not _eat from it. I asked if that wasn't _technically _temptation, which wasn't _strictly _very angelic of us, was it?"

"...Brilliant," Crowley snorted, lip curling in a grin.

"You said you wouldn't laugh!" Aziraphale protested.

"No, I _said_ I'd tell you why I lost my second set of wings too. _Birth mark_, ey? Tut tut, angel, lying to me." Crowley smirked, rolling the star around his hands. Aziraphale managed the rather impressive feat of puffing out Crowley's chest in irritation, but Crowley kept up his side of the bargain all the same: "I got cast out 'cause I wasn't much a fan of suffering. Didn't get the point of it. Didn't seem like a way to test anyone, you know? So...when people suffered...got plagues and diseases and pains...I—" Crowley's hands moved around the star, as though he were moulding it like clay. The star's form shivered and twisted. "—made them new, healthy bodies. S'all just stars at the end of the day, angel. Always has been."

He flicked the now-formed star out, and the brilliant light gleamed and dulled, forging into a physical body. It was a rather good replica of Aziraphale's favourite form, Crowley thought, and the sort-of-angel could certainly make whatever tweaks and amends he wanted once he was settled in.

"...I imagine the Almighty wasn't best pleased," Aziraphale said, a little more than mere awe in his voice.

Crowley shrugged.

"Aye, well...she was a bit miffed about the interference. So off I went down to Hell."

Aziraphale's energy began to move away from him then, separating from Crowley and hovering like a strange reflection in an ethereal pool beside him. He didn't look wholly happy as he wandered around the physical body Crowley had created.

"...There's darkness in this. Little flecks of it," he observed, dragging a ghostly finger over the form's face. The inky-black fragments of space that had been attached to the star as Crowley ripped it from the air glimmered and gleamed within it.

"Not always a bad thing," the demon replied. "Darkness doesn't need to mean evil; light isn't always good either. Think about it — you've seen Heaven and Hell, s'not so cut and dry, is it? Sun's light, shadows are dark, but to a man in the desert, the sun's the painful and the shadows are relief, right?"

Aziraphale turned to look at Crowley then, a little smile curling his lips.

"That was rather poetic for you, my dear."

"..._Shaddap_ and get in your new body, angel. You left biscuit crumbs in my soul so I'm not sharing anymore."

The ex-angel rolled his eyes, but the smile remained, so Crowley definitely got away with it. Aziraphale stepped into the body, his energy gleaming around it for a heartbeat before he opened his eyes. His eyelids fluttered as he adjusted to the new form, rolling his shoulders and ankles to warm himself up a little. With a little arching of his back, Aziraphale allowed his wings to unfold — they were not the usual pure white, however, with flecks of grey feathers dotted throughout them now. Crowley had made this for him, so he did his best not to look disappointed. He looked disappointed.

"When you were an archangel...you weren't called _Crawly_, I presume?" Aziraphale asked, changing the subject away from the silent one they were both looking at.

"No. Back then I was called Raphael. Didn't really like it, but we don't get to pick our names. 'Cept when we do," Crowley added, considering his own penchant for name-changing. "Perk of the basement job."

"We must have missed each other in passing," Aziraphale mused. "I was given the name Raphael too. Before I got demoted."

"Suits you better than it did me. Mind, being an angel suits you better than it did me."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Aziraphale smiled, moving forward to close the gap between them. "I...I have rather been meaning to ask you...before, the whole affair with the Sin...you—" Aziraphale's face burned crimson, and his eyes would not meet Crowley's. "You said...you said you felt the opposite of '_ooo this feels spooky'._ About...me."

"It was about as close as I could get to saying the word without spontaneously combusting, in my defence."

"R-Right. B-b-but what I mean is...was...was that _you-you _speaking or-or the...the Sin making you s-say it?"

Crowley looked positively offended at the implication. Besides, Aziraphale was the most intelligent (albeit naive) being he'd ever met. He was quite sure the ex-angel knew how Sins worked. They didn't plant thoughts; they amplified them, painfully. Only Aziraphale would assume this couldn't apply to him if it was anything _nice_.

"I l...I _llllluuuuh_..." Crowley tripped over his tongue and his entire being trying to say it out loud. "I _llllove-_you-so-much-it-hurts, ow-ow-ow-ow mah tongue!" The demon yelped and stuck out his forked tongue with a hiss. The hissing was not merely from the snake-demon's throat, but from the burning welt that appeared angrily on his tongue. "Tha'sss noh ev'un mmne tchryin' t'be _wrow-man'ic,_ A-sss-eeruh-thayul!*"

Crowley flapped his hands over his tongue until the burn miracled away, before continuing, discomfort still slithering over his form as he admitted to rather non-demonic matters: "I mean it _literally_ feels like my ribs are about to explode whenever I look at you because I physically can't process anything other than hate and anger. You're...the wonderful cheese to my lactose intolerance. Delicious, but ultimately my entire body will make me pay for it later."

Aziraphale smiled, eyes lighting up, but then he frowned quickly.

"..._Lovely_ choice of analogy there, Crowley..._really_ delightful."

"Look, I confessed it — quite literally — under the stars, what more do you want? Now, we'd better get a move on; if we keep hanging out here in the stars, there won't be a world to go back to, angel."

* * *

(_*Non-burnt-tongue version: That's not even me trying to be romantic, Aziraphale!"_)


End file.
